Ed Head

Sport: Baseball

Induction Year: 1965

Induction Year: 1965

Ed Head wasn’t the first—or last—Louisiana high school pitching standout who went on to big league stardom. But he is the only one who was a lefthander in high school and a righthander in the big leagues.

For the first 17 years of his life, Head was a southpaw. But his left arm was crushed in a head-on collision of two school busses on a narrow country road near the Arkansas state line in 1935, when Head and his teammates were on their way back to Bastrop after a baseball game.

The doctor in Mer Rouge wanted to amputate, but Head vetoed that motion and Dr. Lucian Larche was able to save the arm. The only thing Ed wouldn’t be able to do with his left arm was pitch.

Head went back to the farm with his left arm in cast and started throwing things—starting with corncobs, and working his way up to baseballs—with his right arm. Four years after the accident he signed a pro contract, and one year later Edward Marvin Head was pitching for the Brooklyn Dodgers with his right arm.

That’s the one he used to pitch a no-hit, no-run game against the Boston Braves at Ebbets Field on April 23, 1946.

It was the first no-hitter by a Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher since 1940, but the event that made it especially significant for Head was the fact that it came one day after the birth of his second son.

There was considerable doubt about Head’s condition before the game because he had been troubled by a sore arm—the aftermath of an Army mishap in which his pitching shoulder was smashed by the recoil of a 57-millimeter gun during Texas tank corps maneuver. But the 6-1, 180-pound pitcher from Bastrop, La., showed no traces of soreness in the game.

It was the only no-hitter of his professional career, but he pitched a one-hitter for Montreal in the International League before the Dodgers called him up in 1942.

“Boy, what a day, what a day!” head exclaimed after the game. “First, I celebrate the birth of my son, and then I pitch a no-hitter. And, would you believe it, I knew I was going to do it all the time. I felt great right from the start.”

Four Braves reached base—three on walks and one on an error when Pee Wee Reese bobbled a routine grounder by Bama Rowell in the fifth inning and recovered too late to throw out Rowell.

The fans groaned when Tommy Holmes, leading off the seventh inning, caught a pitch squarely and drove it down the right center alley. But Carl Furillo ran it down and caught the ball by the exit gate.

“That was the only bad pitch I threw,” Head said later. “I meant to keep it on the outside. You can bet I was saying to myself, ‘Come on, Furillo!’ “

“I don’t think I had anything extra in the way of stuff today. I just threw harder and harder as the game went on. All I used was my fastball, curve, slider and change of pace. The slider is the only thing I didn’t have before the war.”

With two out in the eighth inning, Whitney Wietelmann hit a sharp liner toward third. Pete Reiser, who had moved in on Wietelmann’s feint of a bunt on a previous pitch, was in position to make a desperate backhand stab to spear the ball in the webbing of his glove.

Connie Ryan walked to lead off the first inning, but he was promptly erased by a double play. Wietelmann walked in the third inning, but Head made a good play on losing pitcher Mort Cooper’s sacrifice but attempt to force him at second base. Charley Workman, batting for Cooper, walked to open the ninth inning. But rookie catcher Ferrel Anderson picked him off first with a snap throw as Ryan struck out.

Then Hopp went down on a roller to Billy Herman, and Head had to fight his way through a crowd of well-wishers to reach the dugout as spectators ignored restraining ushers to pour onto the field. But the first thing he did was get the ball from first baseman Ed Stevens.

He set down the Braves in order in five innings, and retired 12 in a row in one stretch.

Billy Southworth’s Braves didn’t make it easy for him. They were jumping on 2-0 and 3-1 pitches in the latter innings, but to no avail.

The no-hitter was Head’s first starting assignment after a stint in the U.S. Army tank corps during World War II. He was passing out cigars in the Dodgers’ clubhouse before the game, but he had something else to celebrate a few hours later.

The game attracted a crowd of 30,287 spectators, but did not include Leo Durocher. The Dodger’s fiery manager was summoned to court that day to answer chargers of assault and battery against a Brooklyn fan.

Ironically, the no-hitter was the beginning of the end for Head, who was 28 years old. His sore arm didn’t bother him on April 23, but he won only two more games that season and never pitched in the big leagues after 1946. After attempting a comeback with Fort Worth of the Texas League the following year, he managed minor league teams from Canada and Pennsylvania to Mobile, Ala., and Monroe, La., before dropping out of baseball to return to Bastrop.

Head started a total of 53 games in his five-year major league career and relieved in 65 more. His career earned run average was 3.48. he won 27 games, lost 23 and saved 11.

Ricky Dean Head, who was born one day before his dad pitched his no-hitter, quarterback Bastrop High to the District 1-AAA football championship in 1963 and was selected high school “Athlete of the Year” at the 1964 Ark-La-Tex sports award banquet. He went to Baylor University on a football scholarship, but he also played baseball for the Bears.

Ed Head was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame in 1965. He died in Bastrop in 1981, at the age of 62.